Festival of Learning Day 2

Day 2 lived up to Day 1. Could I end there? 🙂

Seriously, the themes from day 1 carried on.  My main takeaway from Dean Groom  is the importance of imagination and giving opportunities to not only let this surface/play but to used to meet a need to find a solution.  Actually, he mentioned this equation: tools + imagination + need = solution. I also appreciated him echoing Greg Alchin’s message of leveraging technology affordances to address accessibility.

Dr Bron Stuckey inspired us to pick up our hero journey as we learn more about PLANE and becoming better teachers for ourselves, our students, our peers.  While I’m not personally sold on the hero thing (I’ve got issues carried over from my IT days), I’m definitely sold on the idea of a learning journey being a narrative as a good hero journey should be and definitely on the idea that fun/enjoyment should be part of it.

If really pushed to do pick just one thing I can act on from the plethora of ideas gained from the conference, it’d have to be this: promote well- being of students and staff alike, thanks to Dan Haesler.   I previously blogged about what makes people tick which does help promote well-being. Dan spoke at length of Seligman’s PERMA model: Positive emotions, (active) Engagement (vs conformity), Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment.  So many ways or angles to act on promoting well-being.  And if  still lacking inspiration, find some in Dan’s crowd-sourced wallwisher here.

I found Mark Treadwell really affirmed many of my thoughts on teaching, e.g. importance of concepts (vs topics), understanding the learning process, the beauty (my term) of inquiry. “Identify the concept, keep the body of knowledge small, apply knowledge to a number of contexts and practice.”  Apropos contexts, I love how Dan Meyer explains it.

It was really nice to be in Donelle Batty’s session, ably supported by students: Nick Patsianas and Nathaniel.  I am partial to their Massively Minecraft: Project Mist story (read more here).  Justly so.

Finally, I reckon Dr Jason Fox‘s approach for his wrap-up keynote was novel.  He showed us his notes – doodles for each session he attended – pity no one doodled his session yesterday! Anyway, just imagine if we didn’t force students to copy as we write it but let them freely doodle their notes.  As a Maths teacher, I have experimented with letting kids make their own definitions/explanations such as SMS or tweet but doodles trumps that, imho.

It was also good to see the PLANE team relax and dance gangnam style – thanks to Rolfe Kolbe, you can watch it too.  Rolfe tried to explain to me as he was doing this but I got lost as he flicked through a few apps. This guy’s an ace.

Well done PLANE team and presenters. The Festival of Learning really got this message across:

Do it. Share it. Lead it.

Finishing up here, just under 500 (not 300) words again.

Repeating my PS: if you’re an educator, register at PLANE.

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2 thoughts on “Festival of Learning Day 2

  1. Rolfe Kolbe says:

    Thanks for your insights and support again Malyn! (you are a champion!) I am disappointed I missed the minecraft hands on sessions and Donelle Batty’s session though! Live on PLANE!

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